168th st and Haven

Branches in Spring

Cornelia St Night

Some of My Own Poetry, Before & After Seeing Friends Read @ Cornelia St. 

Promise
Promise of a future
What it is supposed to be.
The world without bombs and violence
The 60s redux without the love
Bullets and shrapnel
I promised to only love books
I promised to be the one friend to stay
To look beyond your bipolarity
And bad breath
Promises to myself cannot be undone
And fidelity is stronger than wisdom
Unfortunately

I'm glad the Dead are Dead
My father loved Patriots day
He'd get us up at 6am
To watch the bobbing of muskets
The smell and shape of gunpowder
Acting like theater
Acting like a reenactment
Of a violent gesture
Done for noble causes
History as propaganda
What is a parade, but a marathon
In slow motion
And with in funnier costumes
Test of endurance
And drums
Heart pounding
Hand clapping
Of families and friends
And friends of families
Waiting to give
The hug at the finish line.

When lilacs last in the courtyard bloomed
And April was the miracle of nature
Nothing yet washed away by rain and tides and wind
The sandy hurricane
Rearranging the shorelines of our lives

When I dreamed of your mother
Flying to my window
Asking me to take care of you
When I believed in Love
Altruistic and rich in openness
Finally, my honesty had found a home.

What I have Learned from you
That souls open themselves
A flash of light
Or the flash of a raincoat
Let me show you me
Something I find holy
But you will run screaming.
I dare you to be unimpressed.

I stayed.
It's not the mountains it's the coast.

I keep the conversations.
The emails,
Everything that you routinely delete on your end
I keep the memories
Because you throw them away.
Because of your amnesia.
It's not the man, but it's the ghost.


SEEN NEAR WASH SQ PARK: "JAWN"- Philly Slang for {noun}

Movie Crane out my window

When a very familiar scene turns into a new geography . . .

Poetry for Open Mike, Yippie Cafe 4/13/13

In This Generation
Standing at the mic
Not making a sound
Everything is amplified.
His face resembles a mountain,
More than it resembles the album covers.
Rock & roll with a folk music attendance.
Myth held together by band aids and rusty guitar strings.
He plays on the postage stamp
Until the music hits a wall.
Electricity stops running through the guitar cable, broken and useless.
Alone, abandoned, by his tools and toys,
He steps up to the microphone, naked
Parting his lips

And trusting that,
with the song
There will be Electricity.

Basement Helicopter

He wanted to build things.
At the end of his life,
Sit in an empty room
Nodding sagely at the oak panels
Driving by buildings
Monuments to the richest man
Build with your hands
Because what you build with your voice
Fades into the air
And he was sane enough to build a helicopter in the basement
And crazy enough to go to architecture school
just in case


Do you pronounce the H?
In your long, ethnic, real last name
that you hear as clearly
As I can hear you say your stage name.
Not a blessing.
And the mystery of
Your middle name
Echos your last name, shortened
How do you say your name?
Your grandfather
Your father
Your daughter
As a nod to
Your grandfather
Your father
And the pieces of you
You leave silent and unsaid


Pictures Henry Didn't Take
Focus on all the before and all the after.

Before:
The rehearsals before the publicity,
Trope of the struggling band
Autographs on the contract.
Your trip to Venezuela,
and the worlds strange to you.

After:
Who you were when freed.
Poor and sleeping on the floor with your one year old,
The new stranger in in business suit and beard.
The cartoon singer making guest appearances, alongside monsters.
1977, sitting in the middle of the road, drunk and despairing.
The camera, snaked through your elegant nose
Finding the cancer,
The plum in your throat.
The last morning on the horse called Czar,
who rode him into oblivion.

Birthday Party Pix

Wall Panel: Red, Blue and Purple

Every restaurant should let you draw

Wall Panel: Yellow, Green, Orange

Blue Morning View

Amazing how the photos distort my visual perception of the view.


In my eyes, the distance is closer. The greys are tinged with blue. Maybe some purples.

And of course, the dimension is one of immensity; where birds soar, and so could you, if you had the right feathers and arose from a dream with the secret of flight still in our bodies.

Hudson Views

Branches